


Enough

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Gen, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 05:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14013492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: She wasn’t the kind of woman to fall for a bloke like him. Bert knew that. He wasn’t bloody stupid, no matter what the boys might say about him when he’d had a few. Miss Fisher might have been born on his side of the tracks but she hadn’t stayed there. Didn’t mean that he couldn’t dream though, especially at the start.Against all of his better judgment, Albert Johnson is in love.





	Enough

She wasn’t the kind of woman to fall for a bloke like him. Bert knew that. He wasn’t bloody stupid, no matter what the boys might say about him when he’d had a few. Miss Fisher might have been born on his side of the tracks but she hadn’t stayed there. Didn’t mean that he couldn’t dream though, especially at the start. 

She got off that ship like a vision and of all the cabs, she picked theirs. Bert didn’t know for sure, but he reckoned that he had almost loved her from that first time. Cos she smiled like an angel and she looked like one too, but cackled like a bloody demon. And Bert, he had red blood like any normal bloke did, a heart that beat just the same. Hell, even Cec had looked at her twice and Bert had never known him ogle a girl like that. It was impossible not to. No other lady in Melbourne looked like she did that day. No other lady, let alone a toff, had ever made Bert think about his patched trousers and the rips in his shirt, but he found himself folding his cuffs back so she didn’t see they needed fixing. 

And after that. Well, it was too late. Cos what did she do? Only wanted to keep them around, him and Cec, and give them odd jobs to do. The first time Bert went with her to a dodgy part of town, in the dark too, he wanted to protect her. Phryne Fisher, who had probably never needed protecting. But how was he to know? So he tried and she laughed and got him to give her a boost into the window of a bloody drug den. He knew then, as soon as he touched her, that there was nothing there. Not from her. And it was because she didn’t think twice, just put her hands on him and let him put his hands on her, and didn’t even think. 

So he vowed then, promised himself, that he’d always be there. She’d bewitched him, and there was nothing else he could do except be there, because she was the best lady he’d ever met. 

And maybe she felt like they were friends, cos she didn’t have to have him and Cec in her kitchen at all hours of the day. But she did, and she was always happy to see them, or at least she never minded it, like they were just supposed to be there. Just as much as Dottie and Mr B and Jane were supposed to be there. Bert only realised later that he had been brought into a family, and they were all there together because of Miss Fisher. She’d adopted him, them, and they all loved her, though Bert reckoned he’d love her more if she’d ever look his way.

But she had him. 

Inspector Jack Robinson.

Bert had accepted that Miss Fisher would never love him, but it hurt like hell that she would love a bloody copper instead. Bert watched it happening, and he probably knew all about it before they did. He knew, cos he’d been dreaming of Miss Fisher making those eyes at him. He knew, cos the inspector was just a bloke, and Bert knew blokes. He’d lost enough mates to the disease through the years, after all. It was even cos of Miss Fisher that he almost lost Cec to it too, with the whole Alice thing. 

So he knew and he watched it, and there were times he wanted to shake Jack Robinson. What a bloody idiot he was. Miss Fisher knew what was going on. Miss Fisher was just waiting there, for the idiot to make his move. A move that any fool would have made the first minute that Miss Fisher made those eyes at him. It made Bert grit his teeth just to keep from shouting and calling the copper all the names he could think of. 

Mr B worked it out, or at least he was the only one who ever said anything. In the kitchen, just Bert and him, and Bert asked about Mrs B, cos he had been feeling romantic. And Mr B was happy to talk. He told him how Mrs B had been a Catholic, like Dottie, and he had been a Protestant, like young Collins, but how that didn’t matter. 

“After all, Albert,” he said, smiling into his cup of tea, “None of us can help who we love.”

And when he looked up, Bert could see it in his eyes. So he nodded, cos that was all he could do. He’d never had the words to talk about that stuff. Not in the way Mr B could, or the people that wrote the books Dottie and Alice read and swapped between them. Sat at that table, right then, he thought that maybe Jack Robinson didn’t have the words either. In a way, that made it easier to stand, though it still hurt like hell. It was easier to think of Jack Robinson like that. Not even a copper, just another bloke who was blinded by the light of Miss Fisher and could hardly feel his way through it. 

Even when Miss Fisher and the inspector weren’t speaking, Bert held his tongue. Miss Fisher asked him and Cec to keep an eye on Mrs Stanley, and they did it gladly, cos by then, family was family. And it was them, him and Cec, that Miss Fisher trusted with that. She’d never love Bert like he loved her, but that didn’t mean there was nothing there. Sometimes, he’d catch her looking at him as though she was thinking hard about something and he could never figure it out. Those were the days he let himself dream, just a little bit, just to pass the time. Dreams were free after all, and no one could take them away from him. 

Not even the day she left for England, or the day she came back and kissed Jack Robinson in front of them all.

Or the day she got married, when Miss Fisher asked Bert if he thought she was doing the right thing. 

“You’ve never lied to me, Bert,” she said, “So tell me now.”

“Reckon you’ve got a good bloke,” Bert said, because what else could he say, especially when he had been lying to her. For years. 

She smiled, kissed his cheek and squeezed his hand, and he thought that maybe he’d been wrong all along. He might have thought he’d been lying to her, but maybe she knew him just as well as he knew her. 

In the end, it didn’t matter. Because he loved her. And she loved him, in her way, and she’d changed his life the day she walked into it. And that was enough. It would have to be, and so he’d make it enough. He’d do just about anything for her.

**Author's Note:**

> You will prise this headcanon from my cold, dead hands :D


End file.
